The He-162 was born of the Salamander project, following Herman Göring and Albert Speer's demand for a cheap "throwaway fighter" at the end of WWII.

About this creation

OK, I know this has already been done, and probably better than me to boot. Oh well, here goes:

The 162 was a desperate attempt on behalf of the Germans in the latter half of the war to regain a shred of air superiority. Designed to be made out of wooden panels, glued together, so cheaply made that the plane would be discarded if dammaged.

The plane was dogged by misfortune during tests, some structural, others due to poor quality glue used to hold the whole thing together. Despite this, it was called "a delight to fly" by experienced pilots, and racked up quite a few ATA kills, despite only 170 being manufactured.

Undercarriage - in a plane this small, getting accurate-looking retractable gear is a misery. I had to compromise between accuracy of gear, and accuracy of fuselage shape. The overall finish is OK, but far from brilliant.

And down...

The streamlining looks better nose-on, but this shot shows how I tried to keep the gear as retractable as possible, and hidden as possible when up. You decide whether I succeeded - or not.

The pilot to scale with the plane. This is acutally pretty correct, in terms of the real thing, as well as to scale with the minifig.

A close-up of the pilot. Yes, I know that's a police uniform he's wearing, but that was the best I had. Doesn't look too awful...

From old to new - Left to right - my SE5-a, my Bf-110, and now my He-162.